


do we simply stare at what's horrible and forgive it?

by behradtarazi



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hermes Centric, Hermes' A+ Parenting, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Relationship Study, but there are some layers to it, character death isn't shown but is discussed, hermes was a shitty dad and i would never suggest otherwise, i feel the need to clarify re the title, it's fluffy a little at the beginning and then, that hermes is in fact what's horrible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:28:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27362752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/behradtarazi/pseuds/behradtarazi
Summary: May walks into the Big House with her head held high, and Hermes cradles Luke as if he’s made of glass, as if he’s about to shatter in his arms - really, who’s more likely to shatter? The blissfully oblivious, sleeping boy, or Hermes himself?-Hermes and May over the years, and the heartbreak that comes with it.
Relationships: Luke Castellan & Hermes, Luke Castellan & May Castellan, May Castellan/Hermes
Comments: 8
Kudos: 49





	do we simply stare at what's horrible and forgive it?

Hermes is falling in love with a mortal woman, and he’s not stupid enough to think it will last. He doesn’t lie like other gods might, doesn’t say he’s just a handsome stranger from out of town but he’d settle down for her, because May Castellan is sharp eyed and prophetic and she saw him coming from miles away.

He calls her sunshine and sweetheart and brings her flowers in the morning, teases and flirts, and she laughs, says she’s heard it all before, but the words sound a little smoother coming from him, a little more honeyed and genuine, dripping with holiness and millennia of practice.

She walks down the steps of her small house for their first date, wearing a dress as blue as the summer sky, and he forgets everyone else he’s ever loved, forgets everyone else he’s ever seen, because she’s beautiful, and he’s breathless, and he tells her so.

She smiles, and his heart is pounding in his chest, and he wants to lie to her. He wants to lie to her. It would be so easy to lie to her.

He takes her to Paris and says, “I could spend forever like this,” and the truth is he could. The truth is he won’t. They both know that.

She lets him hold her anyways, and the Fates start cutting threads.

“We have to be insignificant to you after awhile, don’t we?” she says once, unprompted, lying on her back in a field of flowers, looking up at the endless stars. “Mortals, I mean. We go by so quickly. Just a blink of an eye compared to gods, really.”

He sits up, turns to look at her, serious and still the way he never is. He never slows down, never stops moving, always has something to do, somewhere to be, and he looks at her with ancient eyes and the world comes to a halt around them. 

“You could never be insignificant to me,” he says, firm, conviction in every syllable. “I couldn’t forget you if I tried.”

“My love,” she replies, reaching up and trailing her fingers down the side of his face, touch featherlight, “you are a wonderful liar.”

He presses kisses to her collarbone until she forgets. Until he thinks she forgets. She never forgets.

Hermes is a sweet lover, but always a fleeting one. There one night, gone the next. Never settling down.

He doesn't leave May.

For nine months, he doesn't leave May. 

He brushes her hair out of her face in the hospital room under harsh fluorescent lights, and when their boy, their Luke, comes kicking and screaming into the world, Hermes holds him close in arms that don't seem so holy anymore, don't seem so inhuman and untouchable.

Luke wraps his tiny hand tight around Hermes' finger, and Hermes smiles, brighter than the sun.

Years blur together when you’re a god, pass with blinks of the eye, become indistinguishable. But this one, this one has engraved itself in Hermes’ very being, in his magic and his speed. It’s a part of him forever, he’s sure of it, this year with Luke and May, the three of them, living together. The three of them, a family.

He holds his jacket above his head, a makeshift umbrella to protect them from the rain, so mortal and  _ normal _ when he knows with a only click of his fingers he could shield them. But May is holding Luke tightly and grinning, and he’s laughing as they dash down the street to shelter, and - he forgets.

This might be heaven, he thinks. This might be heaven.

Castellans will not be swayed. They are shining and brilliant and golden and they always want  _ more  _ and they will not be swayed. Hermes loves that about May, her determination and her ambition. He will grow to mourn it, too.

(Luke inherits more than just his mother’s eyes. Luke inherits her forcefulness and her smile and a history of slamming doors.)

He begs her not to. Reasons that the Oracle has not taken another host in centuries, reminds that if she is successful they can never be together again. Her blue gaze narrows and grows firm, and he knows he’s lost the battle before it’s even begun. It’s an impossible fight, and he still doesn’t give it up.

“I’ll never forgive you for this,” he says once, finally, standing in the doorway of their bedroom, Luke soundly sleeping feet away. May doesn’t even look up from her suitcase, packing for their trip to New York, lips curling with a hint of a smile.

“My love, you are a wonderful liar.”

May walks into the Big House with her head held high, and Hermes cradles Luke as if he’s made of glass, as if he’s about to shatter in his arms - really, who’s more likely to shatter? The blissfully oblivious, sleeping boy, or Hermes himself?

The only sounds he can hear are the far off laughter of campers and the nervous swish of Chiron’s tail, and Hermes almost wants to shake him, wants to rage and demand he explain why he isn’t  _ stopping her _ . Chiron said all he could, he knows. The panicky, helpless feeling, the desire to be able to do something, anything at all, doesn’t fade. It doesn’t fade. It might be the first time he’s ever felt it. 

Then, a scream breaks the idyll, and the attic windows shatter, and the feeling of old magic sets the hair on his arms standing up, and Hermes is moving without a second thought, handing Luke to Chiron and running, running as fast as he can, the ichor in his veins pumping at the speed of light, desperately shouting her name without even noticing it. He catches May before she even hits the ground, cupping her face and trying to soothe her as she shakes and shudders, green smoke trailing from her clouded and unfocused eyes, filling the room with prophecy.

And Hermes sees everything.

Hermes thinks he sees everything.

"Let me save him," he says once, standing alone in front of the Fates, thinking of May and a sky blue dress. "Let me save my Luke. I know I can fix this, if you just let me go to him-"

Atropos laughs, Lachesis sighs, and a single tear drips down from Clotho's eye.

The thread keeps spinning on and on.

And the trickster god, the thief, the king of the crossroads, stands by and watches his son become the monster Hermes always knew he’d be.

It’s not - easy. It’s not easy.

You can say a lot of things about the distance Hermes gives his son, the neglect, you can call it a lot of things, cruel and foolish and monstrous and in the future he’ll agree with you, but it’s  _ not easy.  _ It’s never, ever easy.

George and Martha won’t block Luke’s prayers. They refuse, they hiss and snap, curl tight around the staff and bare their fangs at him when he asks them to, and any other god would probably smite them on the spot. But Hermes sighs, weary and resigned, and he doesn’t ask them again.

It’s a little bit heartbreaking, how fast the prayers stop coming.

They’re frequent, at first, and Hermes thinks that nothing can ever be worse,  _ nothing _ can ever be worse than this, than hearing his son’s voice tearstained and begging for some kind of help, some kind of sign, anything. Anything.

He learns a few years later that the silence is worse. That the silence aches, burns with the weight of everything he has done, and offers no reprieve, god or not. God or not. There is no escape. He isn’t sure that he deserves one, anyways.

The lock clicks open under his hand without need for any key, and Hermes walks into the Castellan home with heavy footsteps, forcing his expression into something warm. There’s a lump in his throat already, but he’s gotten used to that. It always happens when he visits her. The first time, he had ended up running for the door, but that was years ago.

May is in the kitchen, humming aimlessly to herself, the confidence, the purpose she used to carry in her shoulders long gone. She turns when she hears him, and her face lights up, a snippet of her old spark returning, the ghost of the woman she used to be.

“Hermes!” she says, smiling as he pulls her into his arms. “Luke will be home soon, his bus is just running a little late today! Dinner is almost ready.”

He nods, presses a gentle kiss to her forehead, and wonders how many times she’s told herself that his bus is just running a little late. “How are you feeling, sweetheart?” She gives him her usual response, and it would be easy to fall into a routine, if he didn’t feel like his heart is being squeezed in his chest as he glances around, taking careful stock of the state of the house.

She’s not getting worse, at least. That’s the best he can manage. It’s not enough.

He cleans while they talk, achingly domestic, removing the piles of moldy sandwiches and cookies, the absence of Luke like a gaping wound in between them. There’s small comfort in the fact that he’s the only one truly aware of it, the only one witnessing their boy twist up into something else entirely.

She looks away from him for a moment, and when she turns back her face lights up all over again. “Hermes!” she says. “Luke will be home soon, his bus is just running a little late today! Dinner is almost ready.”

He forces himself to smile. “I can’t wait,” he replies, soft and low and so, so hollow.

He can almost hear her.  _ My love, you are a wonderful liar.  _ Wry and cutting right through the bullshit.

But she doesn’t say it.

Hermes never comes face to face with Kronos. Face to face with Luke. He’s not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse, a gift or a condemnation.

Is there a grace in dying by your son’s hand? In laying down your weapons and taking what you might just deserve?

He doesn’t find out.

Olympus survives, and Luke dies something like a hero, and that’s supposed to make it hurt less. Olympus survives, and Hermes has a list of every one of his unclaimed kids, and that’s supposed to make the dead ones less gone.

He stands, silent and invisible, a few feet away from the crowd in Camp Half-Blood as the funeral shrouds go up in flames. He can feel some of the other gods’ eyes on the ceremony, and he makes sure that they don’t notice him either, that no one does. There’s a knot in his chest that’s starting to unravel, and he isn’t sure what the end result will be, and he doesn’t want anyone else to figure it out before him. He thinks at the center he’ll find tears or fury or hope or nothing at all, and he isn’t sure which one scares him the most.

He looks up, and locks gazes with Chris Rodriguez. Another one of his sons, another former traitor, staring straight into his soul, straight past his magic. Chris shakes his head wordlessly and turns away, and it feels like a punch to the gut.

Suddenly, he realizes that he isn’t supposed to be here, feels like an intruder in someone else’s home. This isn’t for him. It isn’t his place. And neither is Olympus, not right now.

He walks away.

He walks, and walks, and walks.

It takes him too long to muster up the nerve, to do the right thing and damn the part of him that says that this new Oracle hasn’t changed anything and that he’s a fool for thinking so. The door opens with a touch again, and he steps inside with the eons of hurt in him again, and then everything goes off book.

The house isn’t in shambles, and May isn’t in the kitchen, making the same lunch over and over again for a son that will never come home. Instead, she’s sitting in the dining room, her head in her hands, looking more like herself than she has in over two decades, and Hermes feels something inside of him explode, fireworks ricocheting. But it barely registers through the haze of the last few days, is barely noticeable through everything else that has happened to him, to her, to both of them. 

He sits down heavily beside her, and she looks at him with complete understanding, and he knows that he doesn’t have to say anything. He tastes blood, and he knows that he doesn’t have to say anything.

He needs to say it. He needs to say it.

“Luke is dead.”

Not  _ he did the right thing in the end _ , not  _ he’s in Elysium _ , not  _ he didn’t hate you _ .

“Luke is dead,” he repeats.

And they sit there, he’s half certain that she hates him for it, but they sit there, and it’s silent for a long, long time, a kind of silence that he’s always hated but knows better than to break. A kind of silence he’s realizing that Luke learned from his mother, somehow, some way.

“The truth doesn’t suit you.”

He laughs, tilts his head back and laughs, and it sounds like a sob. “I’m a wonderful liar.”


End file.
